The three Democrats vying for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat agree that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has grown increasingly brutal under President Donald Trump, but they are sharply divided over whether the agency can be fixed at all.
Abdul El-Sayed, a former Wayne County public health director and progressive Democrat, is the only candidate calling for ICE to be abolished. U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, a center-left Democrat from Birmingham, says ICE should continue to exist but argues the agency needs major reforms and tighter oversight. And state Sen. Mallory McMorrow of Royal Oak also rejects abolition, saying ICE has a legitimate role but must be “vastly reformed.”
The dispute has turned ICE into a defining issue in the Democratic primary ahead of the Aug. 4 election. For Democrats nationally, the Senate seat is a must-in if the party is going to seize control of the chamber in November. That makes the Democratic primary all the more important as ICE continues to arrest, assault, and kill American citizens without recourse, while doing the same to undocumented immigrants at cruel and unprecedented levels.
Since escalating deportation raids in September, federal immigration officers have shot at least 13 people nationwide.
The leading Republican candidate, Mike Rogers, is zealously in support of ICE and even accepted contributions from private prison companies that contract with ICE to detain immigrants.
El-Sayed calls ICE “irredeemable” and pushes abolition
For El-Sayed, the debate over ICE is a moral one. Following the federal law enforcement killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, El-Sayed said in a statement that ICE “cannot operate within the bounds of the Constitution or human decency — it must be torn down and immigration enforcement must be rethought from scratch”
Retraining won’t fix an agency that he says has “murdered two American citizens,” terrorized communities, and morphed into a para-military force that operates with impunity.
“When I’m in the U.S. Senate, I intend to lead the effort to abolish ICE,” El-Sayed said in a WDET interview that aired on Jan. 22.
El-Sayed says the U.S. can have effective border security and immigration enforcement, but it can be done by dismantling ICE and rebuilding an alternative from “scratch.”
“We can have a safe and secure southern border. We can enforce immigration law,” El-Sayed said. “But ICE is not about that. ICE is a paramilitary force normalizing the use of government power on peaceful streets, in thrall to one man. They are using the pretext of immigration to weaponize against the laws and norms and mores of our democracy and our Constitution itself. And I believe that it ought to be abolished.”
In a statement after federal agents fatally shot Pretti on Jan. 24, El-Sayed called ICE “irredeemable” and said “retraining won’t fix it.”
“The only reason to deny this is political cowardice,” El-Sayed said.
McMorrow says ICE should exist, but must be “vastly reformed”
McMorrow, who entered the Senate race as a next-generation Democrat, has taken a middle position. She supports keeping ICE but wants to force it back toward its stated mission through oversight, funding leverage, and stricter accountability.
In a WDET interview aired on Jan. 9, McMorrow was asked directly whether ICE should exist.
“Yes, and it needs to be vastly reformed,” she responded.
McMorrow argued ICE is essential to keep Michigan residents safe.
“Michigan is a border state,” McMorrow said. “We need Immigration and Customs Enforcement to do the work of what and who comes across the border. That should be its job. Its job should not be to unleash on communities to terrorize people, to go after people whose skin color isn’t exactly right, or who have an accent.”
McMorrow has also supported using Congress’s spending power to force the agency to change. She has laid out specific policy changes that she wants to see tied to reforming ICE.
In a Jan. 27 campaign video, she said the agency has “gone completely rogue” and urged Congress to leverage DHS funding votes to demand meaningful changes, including firing recently hired agents who don’t meet basic law enforcement standards, requiring clear identification and banning masks, ending warrantless home entries, and ensuring strict use-of-force policies with real consequences for violations.
McMorrow also said ICE should prioritize dangerous criminals rather than detaining people without criminal convictions, and called for protections for sensitive locations like schools and churches as part of an overhaul.
Stevens backs reforms and Noem impeachment after voting for “gratitude” measure
Stevens has recently adopted harsh language to describe ICE in the field, calling the agency “out of control,” and supporting an effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“Secretary Noem has refused to answer basic questions to Congress about ICE operations,” Stevens said in a Jan. 21 statement announcing her support for Noem’s impeachment.
On Jan. 25, Stevens said she would co-sponsor legislation aimed at redirecting what she described as ICE’s “$75 billion slush fund” to state and local law enforcement programs.
But Stevens’s record includes a vote that has been a turnoff for many voters. In June 2025, she broke with most Democrats and voted in favor of a House resolution that “expresses gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, for protecting the homeland.”
Her position on ICE has changed as voters have become increasingly incensed with the agency’s violent and often unconstitutional tactics.
In a statement following the death of Pretti, Stevens said “ICE is out of control” and called for stronger accountability, urging federal agents to listen to local officials and leave Minneapolis. Her statement described the repeated shootings and routine use of force as “flat-out wrong and against everything this country stands for.”
Corporate PAC money divides the field
The three Democrats are also split over campaign funding.
El-Sayed and McMorrow have pledged not to take corporate political action committee (PAC) money, while Stevens has accepted contributions from corporate PACs representing health care and other businesses. Stevens has also received a lot of support from pro-Israel PACs and affiliated political groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Her support for Israel has drawn criticism from many of the same progressives who are calling for the abolition of ICE.
As Stevens says she’s the right Democrat to confront Trump’s second-term immigration crackdown, her earlier approach to the president’s impeachment has raised red flags. Stevens was the last Michigan Democrat in Congress who had not yet committed to supporting an impeachment inquiry.
Public opinion shifts as ICE gets more brutal
The candidates’ differing approaches to ICE come as national polling suggests many Americans are fed up with the agency’s brutality and lack of accountability.
Sixty-five percent of Americans now say ICE has “gone too far” in enforcing immigration laws, an 11-point jump since last summer, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. Six in 10 disapprove of the job ICE is doing, and nearly the same share says the agency is making Americans less safe. A 59% majority also say mass protests against ICE are mostly legitimate.
The shift is being driven largely by independents and Democrats, while Trump’s approval rating stands at 39%, with 56% disapproving and 51% strongly disapproving, the poll found.
The poll numbers suggest that Democrats who are weak on ICE will have trouble in the primary elections.
While El-Sayed has the longest and most consistent record of opposing ICE’s tactics, McMorrow and Stevens are ratcheting up their rhetoric.
Whether their positions on ICE will become a significant factor in the election won’t be known until August.
A new Emerson College Polling survey suggests the primary remains wide open, with McMorrow narrowly leading Stevens and El-Sayed, while a large share of voters remain undecided. The Jan. 29 poll of likely Democratic primary voters found 22.4% backing McMorrow, 16.5% supporting Stevens, and 15.9% favoring El-Sayed, while 37.9% said they were undecided and 7.3% backed other candidates.